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The Porn Star, Part II
S1 Ep. 5 Apr 1, 2026

The Porn Star, Part II

The search for porn Jacob Reed hits a wall—so Jacob hatches a new plan: make an audition tape to reach the production company himself. Going deeper down the rabbit hole, Jacob finds himself at the largest adult film gathering in the world, meets a man who named over 4,000 adult actors and, in a shocking twist, learns there’s not a Jacob Reed in porn.

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What happens when someone in the adult film industry uses your real name as their porn name — and you go looking for them? That’s the question at the heart of this two-part episode of Jacob Reed and Me, a true-story podcast about a filmmaker tracking down every other person who shares his name. The Porn Star: Part One covered the discovery, the dead ends, and the surprisingly human conversations with adult performers. Part two goes further: a plan to crash a porn audition, a trip to AVN — the world’s largest adult entertainment convention in Las Vegas — a deep dive into the gay-for-pay genre, and a twist that nobody on our team saw coming. If you’ve ever been curious about how porn performers choose their stage names, how the adult film industry actually works behind the scenes, or what it’s like to investigate someone who really doesn’t want to be found, this one’s for you.

This is also an episode about a much more personal reckoning: looking back at a TV hosting job I took right out of college for the Playboy Channel, rewatching footage I hadn’t seen in fifteen years, and sitting with the discomfort of who I was at twenty-three versus who I am now. It’s a podcast episode about accountability, about context, about the things we do when we’re young and broke and grateful for any opportunity — and about what it means to own them.

Jacob Reed and Me is an indie documentary podcast in the tradition of shows like Serial, Radiolab, and 99% Invisible — carefully produced, character-driven, and built around one stranger-than-fiction premise. New episodes drop Wednesdays.

This episode discusses adult themes and, yes, actual pornography. Headphones recommended.

When we left off, I was out of ideas.

I’d spent months trying to find the porn star who performed under my name. I’d found his real name — the most British name imaginable, which we’ll continue referring to with rotating Benedict Cumberbatch-adjacent aliases. I’d left voicemails, called production companies, stumbled into a company connected to the DOJ and the CIA and the Mafia, talked to porn stars I’d worked with fifteen years ago, and tracked down a French director in Paris who’d met him exactly once, twelve years prior, and very much wanted me to stop calling.

And yet: I still hadn’t heard from Benderforth Clumbersome himself.

There was one thing I hadn’t tried. Something that would require a legal consultation, some creative thinking, and — as the legal secretary we called put it — “a very interesting phone call today.”

My plan: send an audition tape to the companies that had worked with Porn Jacob.

The casting notices for these companies asked performers to film themselves pleasuring themselves to completion, on camera. My idea: if I could jump into frame while they were pleasuring themselves — but before the completion — I’d have the producer’s full attention. I could explain the podcast, tell them I’m Jacob Reed, I’m looking for the other Jacob Reed, and ask if they’d put me in touch. All before the auditionee… completed their completion.

There was one problem with this plan, beyond the obvious ones. I am an out-of-shape, middle-aged dad. The companies that worked with Porn Jacob exclusively used young, jacked guys. It couldn’t be me in the video. I needed to find someone who would.

I made a post on a sex work website soliciting guys who might want to audition, in exchange for help with their audition process. I got a surprising number of replies. I did some interviews to narrow it down.

Some guys weren’t down with my idea:

“I’m gonna get blackballed! They’re gonna be like, ‘That’s the guy who sends videos with the other guy that pops up.'”

Some weren’t down with my budget. But eventually I found some willing collaborators — positive, energetic, enthusiastic people who were so into the concept that I started thinking this could actually work.

Now I needed somewhere to film. I called around to hotels and was basically told it’s a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. But I wanted to double-check with some lawyers. None of the lawyers I eventually reached wanted to be recorded giving me advice about the legality of filming porn in a hotel room (go figure). The short version: if it’s not recognizable, you’re probably fine.

I was ready to go. But there was one more person I needed to check with. My wife.

Heather: It just does not sound like a good idea.

Jacob: You don’t have a problem with me doing it. You just think it’s a waste of time.

Heather: I just think it’s stupid.

My wife, as usual, was right. The audition tape would only reach one person. I needed to reach as many people as possible, as fast as possible. I needed to go somewhere where I could expand my reach in a way that penetrated the entire industry in one massive shot.

I needed to go to a porn convention.

AVN is the largest porn convention in the world, held annually in Las Vegas. I asked Heather if she could take the kids solo for a couple of days because I absolutely had to go.

“It looks like Comic Con, but with porn. Actually, I would say it is indistinguishable — the number of scantily clad busty women here versus Comic Con. It’s just a little more nakedly clear what they’re here for.”

The convention was overstimulating in every sense of the word. But it also turned out to be a fertile area to probe people about how they got their names. I talked to so many people with incredible names: Addison Vodka, Autumn Orchid, Sarah Arabic, Ellie Stockholm, Jack Hughman… Toast.

But, when I asked whether anyone had heard of Jacob Reed, I kept hitting the same wall: No. Haven’t. No. No.

Porn is a world of categories and subcategories. I wasn’t going niche enough. I tried narrowing things down: European, male-male. Eventually, I was directed to a very specific area of the convention. And that’s where I met Howard Andrew.

Howard Andrew has been the number one gay porn agent in America for over twenty years. He’s named approximately 4,500 performers. I found him at the convention, and we tried to find a quiet place to talk, which was difficult. We ended up between a dildo stand and a cornhole game where the hole was a giant picture of a butt hole.

Howard didn’t know Barnacle Cummerbund. Basically, Jacob worked in European porn, and the US and European adult industries are largely separate — work visas for adult performers are hard to come by, partly due to concerns about trafficking.

I drove home from Vegas empty-handed.

On the drive back, something kept nagging at me. There was a piece of the puzzle I’d overlooked. Porn Jacob appeared in European films and had the most British name imaginable — but in the one video where I could hear him talk, he was speaking in a perfect American accent.

Our co-executive producer Margot Leitman, who’d spent time studying in the UK, was the one who finally said it:

“I’m starting to think he’s not British.”

Up to this point, I’d been the only person on our team watching Porn Jacob’s videos — I was trying to be a good boss by not asking anyone else to watch porn. But Margot wouldn’t let it go. So I shared my screen and tried to find audio of him talking, which meant scrolling through videos that were, primarily, not talking. After a deep dive (pun acknolwedged) into Porn Jacob’s work — we found that in some videos he had a mole. In others, he didn’t.

And in a stunning turn of events, we discovered that there were two — slightly similar looking — guys who both used the nom de porn of “Jacob Reed.”

Two porn Jacobs. Already more than I could handle. We still needed to find Bandicoot Crumpetbottom, the UK adult actor. And now we also needed to figure out who “Jacob Reed from Los Angeles” actually was.

Howard Andrew hadn’t heard of that Jacob Reed either — he didn’t know US porn Jacob. But Howard mentioned, cryptically, that I might find answers if I looked into what was happening at a particular website. I searched it for American porn star Jacob Reed. The only two videos that came up were ones I’d already found — and one of them, an audition for a site called Sean Cody, wasn’t available anywhere online. I even signed up for a Sean Cody trial. Thousands of videos. No Cliff.

But in searching for Sean Cody, two names kept coming up attached to the company. Unlike Jacob Reed, who turned out to be two people with one name. Jason Bumpus and Walden Woods turned out to be two names with one person.

Walden Woods (aka Jason Bumpus) was the Vice President of Operations for Sean Cody for nearly a decade. He also directed many of their videos, including the casting couch ones. And when I emailed him, he confirmed that he had worked with Jacob Reed.

I learned that Sean Cody was one of the most distinctive companies in gay porn. They reimagined the casting couch concept — models were taken to dinner the night before, picked up in a limo, given a great meal. By the time they were on the beautifully decorated sets, they were comfortable. One of their signatures: the guys were often straight.

“It’s gay for pay. That’s the taboo. Everyone did everything willingly. We’d watch these straight models go from solo to coming back with another person. And then before you know it, you have this straight guy enjoying himself.”

When I showed Walden the Randy Blue audition video I’d been investigating, he laughed.

“That is not our Jacob Reed.” He said, “I don’t know if you were prepared for this, but that is not the person I know.”

There were not one, not two, but three porn Jacob Reeds.

Walden’s Jacob Reed — known as Cliff at Sean Cody — had performed with them for about three years in the early 2010s and become one of their most prolific models. He’d since moved on and was now using the name Jacob Reed at other studios. Walden had named him, pulling from a baby name book kept on his desk. When I asked if he could put me in touch, the answer came back quickly: Walden’s Jacob Reed had no interest in the project at this time.

UK Porn Jacob — Birkenstock Crinkleberry — hadn’t replied to anything.

And US Porn Jacob (Cliff/Randy Blue Jacob) — somewhere in the middle — remained out of reach, his Sean Cody records having been lost in what Walden described as a record-keeping incident that wiped half their library.

Three porn Jacob Reeds.

Talking to Walden about Sean Cody made me think about my own time on the Playboy show. I was wined and dined — I was twenty-three and grateful for a TV hosting job. It felt kind of fun, in a weird way. That’s how I remembered it. But how did the other people who worked on the show feel? I reached out to cohosts, producers, interns, editors, PAs in random cities we worked in. All of them decided talking about this wasn’t the right fit for them at this time. Except one.

Paul Deng had been a camera operator for the production company. I hadn’t talked to him in fifteen years. But one phone call and we were picking up where we left off, joking around as if we were back on set. Paul admitted he was confused when I was hired because I didn’t fit the vibe of most Playboy hosts. “You were sort of like… nerdy and kind of awkward and not necessarily the most fit.”

“There’s definitely some cringe-worthy moments.” Paul confirmed. “You can see it on your faces. Like, those poor guys.”

He also remembered a specific moment I’d almost managed to forget: there was a bit where we were lying in a bed, and the camera widened to reveal naked women on either side of us. When the camera rolled, things got physical. I don’t know if this was something they decided to do or if the producers asked them to, but they started putting their hands on my crotch.

I remember just going: uh, no thanks. Today we might call that assault. At the time, I didn’t feel like the victim — but I also didn’t feel like I was in charge of what was happening to me.

I also asked Paul about the original promise that the show would only show topless women, no sex or penetration. He confirmed: that was the original format. He even recalled his camera training: “We can show the car. We can show the garage. We can’t show the car going into the garage.”

By the time the show aired, “you were seeing a lot of the car going into the garage.”

After talking to Paul, I sat down and watched every episode of the show for the first time since it aired.

It was both better and worse than I thought.

The better part: the majority of the show was just kind of boring. Without the naked people, it was basically an advertisement for porn websites, posing as a TV show. The sexual content that felt transgressive in 2008 barely registers now — mainstream actors have OnlyFans, pop singers advertise polyamory dating apps, a BDSM movie trilogy made over a billion dollars. Watching it now, that stuff was just kind of meh.

The worse part: the things I said. The casual bro-y framing. The way the show talked about women and Asian women specifically. I remembered pushing back on a line that used the term “yellow fever” — a derogatory term for the fetishization of Asian people — and helping script some alternatives. Re-watching the episode, the alternatives weren’t much better. I was twenty-three, out of my depth, and not nearly as empowered to speak up as I am now. But that only made me more horrified by the things I did say.

To understand how the show I thought I was making became the show that aired, I called Wendy Miller — an Emmy-winning TV producer who became head of programming at Playboy TV in 2010 and spent seven years there.

Wendy wasn’t there for our show, but she was hired as part of a push to move away from exactly that type of programming. Before she arrived, she said, the channel was run largely by what she called Friends of Hef — people who’d been there forever, got paid handsomely, made what she described as “misogynistic garbage,” and were untouchable.

Our show felt like an early attempt to do something journalistic and comedic — pitched to the old guard, run through their machine, and shaped into something that served their formula. I may never know where that process started or who was driving it. But I know I was at the end of it, saying and doing things I wish I hadn’t, without the power to stop it.

When I told Wendy about the things I’d found watching the old episodes, she had clear advice:

“I implore you to stop talking about this. All you are doing is digging your own grave.”

And then, after a beat:

“If it really troubles you — just own it. Say you’re sorry, say you understand it was wrong now, say you wish you’d understood it then. But you weren’t in a position of power to advocate for yourself. And for that, you’re sorry.”

After the Playboy conversation, something shifted. I kept thinking about the context I’d been denied. Nobody sat me down and said: Here’s what the show actually is, here’s what will end up in it, here’s what you’ll be saying on camera. I’d made decisions without the full picture. And throughout this entire search, I’d been asking Buffalo Calcium to be part of a story without giving him the context I would have wanted for myself.

I’d been reaching out indirectly for over a year. I had Danny message him. I talked to porn stars about how to reach him. I got a French translator and called Paris. I almost filmed a porn audition to get someone’s attention so they could pass along a message. When I finally found his phone number, I still didn’t fully explain why I was calling.

It was time to just let it all hang out (again, pun acknowledged).

I called, left another voicemail, and this time I didn’t hold back. I told him who I was, what the project was, that I’d also ended up in adult films, that there turned out to be other Jacob Reeds in porn too, that I didn’t care about any of that — I just wanted to talk to him. I gave him everything I would have wanted to know before I made a decision.

He never called back.

As for why he picked my name — that will remain a mystery. Maybe it was a high school bully. Maybe a name his agent came across. Maybe he grew up on a Jacob Street with a pet named Reed. Maybe he wanted a name so ordinary that it would be hard to trace — and it worked, right up until it turned out there were three other people named Jacob Reed in the same industry.

Four, if you count me.

There was one last thing I could do. I’d found his entry in the adult film database — it included his real name, added by someone else. I applied for an editor-level membership.

And removed his real name. I replaced it with Benedict Cumberbatch.

Jacob Reed and Me releases new episodes every Wednesday-ish. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Support the show and get early episodes at Patreon.